Argyll
"The original Super-8 footage that formed the basis for the project was shot in July, 1976, over a week in which I was a guest living on a 65-ft vintage wooden sailboat visiting coastal towns and islands in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. The idea for this film developed in the course of many trips to Scotland between 1975 and 1985. Along with my enduring impressions of the haunting Scottish landscape, both highland and lowland, early-industrial and pastoral, I was entranced for a while with the melancholic quality of this verse from the anonymous "Canadian Boat Song," trying in my imagination to see Scotland as my Scottish ancestors might have thought of it in their subsequent lives as immigrants in Canada. Human participants (briefly seen) are Ron Crosswaite and Damon Kenneil.
From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas -
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
I liked the way the Super-8 grain became emphasized in the transfer to 16mm, as the images became more abstract and the color reduced to strong contrast and essential tones."
— filmmaker Barbara Scharres